Researchers have examined suicide notes to evaluate what leads some people to try to kill themselves. Any conclusions drawn from such data, however, are limited. Fewer than 40% of the people who commit suicide leave notes, and there may be important differences between those who leave notes and those who don’t (Leenaars, 1988; O’Connor et al., 1999). Moreover, suicide notes are subject to various self-report biases, including the desire to leave a particular impression and to elicit a particular reaction from the readers (Leenaars, 2003).
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